Ferguson

News

Yesterday, on November 25, more than 500 people gathered at the downtown campus of McGill University, to stand in solidarity with the on-going events in Ferguson, Missouri. The candlelight vigil was organized by the Black Students’ Network of McGill, after the Grand Jury decided not to indict officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown.

At the beginning of the vigil, the organizers read out the names of Michael Brown, Treyvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Marcellus Francois, Sami Yetim, Sean Bell, among many more. What all these names have in common is that they have been targets of racial violence, or police brutality. After the names were read, the demonstrators stood in silence and remembrance for four minutes.

“We know it’s cold, we know it’s windy. But we hope that moments like this will create real change, and that we will be able to see it in our lifetimes,” said one of the organizers to the crowd. “We will not forget the names of those whom we have mentioned, and the countless other names that we have not.”

One of the demonstrators decided to share a poem with the crowd.

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Another demonstrator, who declared that her name was not important at this point, also addressed the crowd.

“Our initial reaction is not necessarily always anger, or outrage. It is fear. And that is something that we have to admit to ourselves. Last night, while everyone was watching the live cast, everyone was blogging about it, tweeting about it, facebooking about it, inboxing everybody, inboxing each other, and I just stood there in front of the screen and cried. I cried this time, and I cried last time. Yes, a life was lost, but there was no justice served. Which means, that now it is basically open season on our asses. It really is. And I said this last year, and no one listened, and I don’t want to have to be here next year to remind you of that.”

You can listen to the rest of her speech here.

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The vigil ended with the demonstrators singing Amazing Grace in memory of those who are no longer with us.

 

Montreal Vigil in Solidarity wMontreal Vigil in Solidarity w

Click on the picture above to open the gallery. All photography by Gerry Lauzon.

Creative Commons - Loavesofbread
News

The news that came after the ‘grand’ deliberation of the jury last night in response to the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO wasn’t one bit surprising. It did, though, feel like an electroshock of seismic magnitude.

Although it’s obvious that a judicial system that gives the same definition of ”personhood” to multinational corporations as it does to an actual person is rigged and corrupt to the core, it was a shocking verdict given the public outcry revolving around the case, the popular mobilization and the massive sensitization campaign that swept like wildfire throughout communities in the United States.

It seemed more like a sermon on the benefits of the system: St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s tone was that of a bureaucrat, dishing-out bunches of reports, pharisaic evidence and physical proof, in his attempt to make us believe that officer Darren Wilson was right to murder in cold blood an 18-year-old Afro-American male for the crime of stealing a box of cigarillos. McCulloch said time after time that the accounts conveyed by the witnesses were contradictory, that it was all speculation and that, all in all, the legitimate fear that Afro-Americans (and others) have of the judicial system (one that not that long ago was the firewall of segregation) were unfounded, in other words, ridiculous.

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McCulloch, a white, middle-aged man, was standing in front of the cameras last night speaking from the top of his altar down to the amassed crowds of Afro-American residents of Ferguson. It was the perfect metaphor for the hypocrisy of the entire situation. The subaltern can’t not speak. That was the message that rang out, the message that was supposed to quell once and for all the riots that had engulfed the impoverished St. Louis suburb since mid-August.

McCulloch was merely the avatar of a system, the message wasn’t his or that of the members of a jury, it was the message of law. Once McCulloch, from his prestigious position, with all the lights and the cameras driven on him, spoke, that was the word of ”god”: the word that would twist, turn and bend reality to fit its image that we had adjusted for it. In this reality, the people of Ferguson — their anger, their sorrow, their sense of alienation, their profound frustration — don’t fit within the canvas. It’s almost as if this new deity of law could remake events to suit its own pre-established narrative.

It  was a thorough investigation, they say, and out of the 162 000 cases that involved grand juries in 2010 only 11 decided not to return an indictment. But beyond that, there is a profound difference between indictment and conviction. In no measure was it the Grand Jury’s role to convict officer Darren Wilson of murder or manslaughter, voluntary or involuntary but to examine if there were grounds to… Were there grounds? I wonder…

Is the fact that a police officer shot an unarmed teenager several times with forensic evidence that the teenager was shot in the back considerable grounds for indictment? Is the fact that there are several contradictory accounts of the events sufficient grounds for a more in depth investigation through a full trial? The fact that the corner store from which Michael Brown supposedly stole the infamous box of cigarillos that would cost him his life denies that they called in law enforcement, is that grounds for indictment? Maybe the fact that his corpse was left 4 1/2 hours in broad day light, terrorizing the entire community, is reason for indictment on the grounds of negligence?

Forget all of that. There are sufficient grounds in the fact that every 28 hours, an African-American is shot dead by American law enforcement or vigilantes. Let’s shed a bit of light here. Michael Brown’s death is not the first and not the last brutal murder of a young Afro-American at the hands of the police and thus Officer Wilson should have been indicted and convicted within this framework. Unfortunately, the message sent back from the grand jury’s non-indictment was clear: it’s okay for the police to use lethal force against subaltern groups.

It’s okay for Americans to exploit the working force of millions of ”illegal” immigrants and treat them inhumanely. It’s okay for American law enforcement to kill in cold blood young and poor African-Americans, such as 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was shot dead while in a playground, playing. It’s okay to take the poor and toiled to court when they fraud welfare, but when the banks make millions in bonuses and stash them off in the Bahamas to avoid taxation, it’s also okay. It’s illegal in most places to smoke or deal weed to a make a few extra bucks but when too-big-to-fail financial institutions launder blood money from cartels, that’s okay.

This is the state of our judicial systems, that the mainstream media uphold this veil of ideology that casts law as the ultimate truth and the maker and breaker of reality. What is law is truth, what is law is real, all the rest is nonsense…

But ”law” is nothing else than the crystallization of subjective interests. You only have to look at those who benefit from the law, you only have to take a look at the barriers that allow some to have a greater access to justice than others, to see that law is merely the crystallization, in many ways, of ideology.

In this sense, the grand ideal of the American Dream found its wreckage on the rocks of the grand jury. The ideology that uses the symbols of equality, liberty and freedom in practice abides by the notion that some are more equal than others, that everyone has the right to speak but only a few to be heard and if you’re never heard, the question is did you ever speak in the first place?

Law is always the structuring framework of ideology. Example laws vary in countries with different ideologies and forms of law vary in different times, but law is always the subject of the reigning ideology and the economic and social elites. That’s why banks used tight debt laws as leverage on the poorest sections of American society and yet no law could jail the bankers that knowingly, maybe even willingly, instigated the economic downturn.

Law is a silex shaped by ideology, a tool of legitimization of violence, used to keep the subaltern under the grip of the ideological apparatus. Law defines what violence is legitimate in Webberian terms and what violence isn’t, what special interests can use coercive force and what forces have to be denuded of their coercive force.

That’s why the tears, the anguish, the blood, the misery and the voices of the subaltern are rarely taken into account in ”legal” terms. We are tricked into believing that Lady Justice is blind-folded. Justice isn’t blind, it’s blinding.

A luta continua.

Photo used under Creative Commons by Loavesofbread. 

News

In the past few days I’ve written extensively about the current events engulfing the St Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri. In my last article I went into the details of the case, trying to shed a little bit of light on the demagogic arguments that have been boasted right, left and centre by the mainstream American and Canadian media. As I stated, the specific events that led to Michael Brown’s death shouldn’t be for his namesake, for the sake of his family and loved ones and for the community of Ferguson in general, lost of sight in the intense media scrum that is unfolding before our eyes.

This being said, the events that are occurring in Ferguson have happened before and will happen again. Unfortunately in these times, many economically impoverished communities are being held at gun point by a morally corrupt system that perpetrates their submission and oppression, right across the United States and Canada, right across the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, right across the globe.

As I stated in my previous article the protesters —I refuse to call them rioters because as was rightfully stated by many of the inhabitants of Ferguson, the protests in Ferguson aren’t ‘’riots’’— are calling for the end of inequality in the way they are treated by law enforcement, but know that it will only come when they will have succeeded in garnishing true economic equality.

Is it a coincidence that the media has portrayed as a riot every major protest challenging the economic status quo since the economic downturn of 2008? Aren’t there parallels in terms of police response and media portrayal to be drawn between the Occupy Wall Street movement —OWS— , the student strike of 2012 here in Quebec and the ‘’riots’’ in Ferguson?

Indeed there are. They are so blatantly apparent, they sting our eyes like a zephyr of tear gas. The question of police brutality and the gung ho militarization of police forces throughout the western world can only be fully understood when included into this bordered strategy of skimming any social movements for economic justice, of any traction.

democracy projectIn his most recent book, The Democracy Project, David Graeber’s main thesis is that democracy is, unlike the preconceived western idea, not a western cultural phenomenon. Quite to the contrary, democracy in itself is the product not of ancient Greek philosophers, but the result of people of various backgrounds coming together and trying to find consensus. Graeber’s thesis is that democracy’s natural habitat is found outside of the state apparatus. I would like to develop on this idea to include the notion that in the past few decades new robust forms of democracy have grown out of the conflict with the globalized neo-liberal form of capitalism enforced by the state.

It goes without saying that capitalism in its current form is completely at odds with democracy. The current form of capitalism within which we live cannot sustain democracy, for democracy can only exist among equals, or within some semblance of equality. Democracy is thus the antithesis of neo-liberalism, which wants to concentrate wealth and thus power within the hands of a few. Within such a framework democracy is bound to perish.

What does the OWS movement, the Quebec general student strike of 2012 and the events in Ferguson have common? They are movements that are at the forefront of defending our democratic rights and pushing for a greater enhancement of democracy. Fox News ran a story during this past week entitled “Forgetting MLK’s message”, lest we forget that Martin Luther King Jr died in Memphis fighting for economic justice. Martin Luther King Jr knew very well that democracy and civil rights were void, merely a nice gesture if the economic structure which had allowed the oppression of African-Americans for so many years wasn’t challenged. Ultimately he gave his life trying to make that message reverberate throughout America.

Why is there a militarization of police forces within this start of the 21st century? The answer is simple: because of inequality, political elites that have every interest in keeping things the way they are and every interest in maintaining the status-quo will not relinquish their power, and thus have to kill in the egg any such movements that calls for greater economic equality before they gain any margin of maneuver.

Not only are these movements fighting for a more democratic society, they are redefining the space for democracy as a system that isn’t about the wish or aspirations of a political elite and that doesn’t follow the tempo of electoral cycles, but rather is a tool of variable dimensions that magnifies the voices of those that aren’t heard within our current system.

Grabaer in his most recent work—maybe somewhat intentionally—provoked all the right wing and liberal media pundits by equating the OWS movement with the democratic inspirations of America’s first patriots. I not only think that Grabaer’s assertion is correct, but I would also like to extend this to all of the movements that fight for economic, social or environmental justice. The minutemen of the 21st century are to be found in the streets of Ferguson tonight.

A luta continua.

News

It might seem incredible, even improbable, but as I write this article right now there’s a no-fly zone over an American town. It’s rarely stated in the mainstream media, it’s pretty much under the wraps. Maybe because the term ‘no-fly zone’ has been linked for the past few years with some of the world’s worst conflicts such as Libya, Syria and Ukraine. This might hit the point home for the regular Joe watching the news that a suburb by the name of Ferguson in Missouri is undergoing an occupation – there are no other words to describe it – worthy of a war zone.

The killing of African-American teenager Michael Brown sparked the massive uprising that has been omnipresent on our TV screens for the past few days. I feel that it’s important to state Michael’s name time and time again, even though by now it has become a household one, because unfortunately too many in the media are either quick to slander him or as quick to try and overlook the fact that an 18 year old African-American has, once again, died at the hands of law enforcement.

Michael BrownIt is important to remember Michael Brown and the exact facts of his story and his short-lived life because recently many within the mainstream media have been trying to drag his name and reputation through the dirt, trying somehow to use the petty crime of the shoplifting some candy and snacks to justify the police’s horrendous crime of killing an unarmed 18 year old pedestrian.

But one thing must be clear: Michael Browns and Trevon Martins, there are hundreds of them, hundreds of martyrs of police enforcement, thousands of victims of police violence and hundreds of thousands of law abiding ‘’citizens’’ whose rights and liberties are trampled by those who supposedly are there to ‘’serve and protect’’ them.

Michael Brown’s shooting isn’t an isolated case, far from it. While, for the sake of his memory, it’s important to remember the individual aspects of the case, it is also important to place this specific case within a broader framework to understand why and how this occurred and what were the underlying forces that instigated such a horrific outcome.

It is only within this broader framework that the details of the shooting, that some would want the general public to forget, become centerpieces to understanding the social and economic discrimination that is paramount. Omitted from much of the ‘reporting from the ground is the institutional racism and the systemic economic inequality which created the space, the breeding grounds for such police brutality.

It’s not a coincidence, unfortunately, that Michael Brown was an African-American youth. It’s not a coincidence that Michael Brown, being an African-American youth, lived in community where an important percentage of people live under the poverty line. It’s not coincidental that a poor African-American youth by the name of Michael Brown was shot seven times in the back, his only crime that he was born on the wrong side of the tracks in the wrong neighborhood.

To disconnect the events that occurred in Ferguson in the past week from a general understanding of the underlying, silently killing, economical violence is to rob the reaction of the inhabitants of Ferguson of any traction, of any righteousness. And to rob the Ferguson riots of any righteousness is to sterilize them, to disassociate them from their primordial political demand, which is equality. At the heart of the Ferguson riots is the struggle for democracy in America.

michael brown shoplifting cnnMany within the right-wing media would like us to believe that ‘’the mob’ – as they so dearly call them – that are looting and burning, confronting the police, were waiting for this moment like some sort of Christmas in July. Somehow in their twisted rhetoric, riots such as these are just occasions to provoke havoc which completely deplete any sympathy we should have for the cause. Although it is undeniable that the majority of Ferguson residences are profoundly shocked and angry at the killing of Michael Brown, seeing things from that sole vantage point doesn’t render justice to their cause, either.

At play here are two diametrically opposed forces, first of all the riots are not directed at the police forces (the individuals behind the riot gear) per say. When interviewed, local residents are very clear in their demands. They won’t be satisfied with just an end to the violence against their youth, they are demanding an end the economic equality which is the main enforcer of police brutality. The police are seen symbolically by the majority of the population of Ferguson as the defenders of status-quo, of a system that is overtly racist, a system that allows such brutality to perpetrated not only in a flash spark of violence like the death of Michael Brown, but on a regular basis.

Media outlets such as Fox News and Sun News here in Canada are right to a certain extent in their coverage of the events. Except they get it wrong when it comes to which side is fighting to uphold the laws and democratic aspirations of the American state and which is looting and burning. Those who have set Ferguson ablaze aren’t the people that live there, rather it’s the ultra-militarized police force that undergoes no checks or balances, that is completely above all of the laws and the constitution, that can violate with all impunity the rights and liberties of common American citizens.

one bullet hashtag
Image: @MediatedReality on Twitter

Fox News, Sun News and the KKK may applaud the ‘”patriot”actions of the brave police officer that shot an unarmed 18 year old seven times in the back, but the true patriots here, the true minutemen, are those that are resisting an occupying army and the unequal and profound corrupt system they enforce. Such a system is the main suspect in the death of Michael Brown, a system which usually doesn’t offer such gruesome spectacles, but does nonetheless kill on a regular basis, not with bullets of steel, but with bullets in the form of green dollar bills.

* Top image: The Daily Banter

 

News

It was almost like a party. That’s how both mainstream corporate and independent media outlets along with a good chunk of people on the ground via Twitter have been describing the scene in Ferguson, Missouri Thursday night.

I guess that’s what happens when you replace a military-style crackdown on freedom of assembly and freedom of the press by local police with a group of state highway patrol officers marching with the protestors and without riot gear. People celebrate the end of the occupation. I’d probably do the same if I was there.

The site of police marching with the people they are supposed to serve is as heartwarming as it clearly PR damage control. Likewise it’s a good thing that there isn’t a brutal crackdown on rights underway in Missouri currently, but should we really be celebrating?

In order for there to be an end to an occupation, there first needs to be an occupation. In order for fundamental rights to be restored, they first need to be suspended illegally.

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Let’s not forget that the St-Louis County Police Department effectively turned a protest into a riot and a riot into a war zone by using equipment designed for a military. Let’s also not forget how they got that equipment.

As the absurdity of a makeshift suburban police state subsides and the status quo resumes, let’s remember what normal means.

We live in a world where politicians order up arms that the military doesn’t want because those weapons are made in their districts. We live in a world where the military gives their unneeded arms to local police forces that don’t need them, shouldn’t have them but are all too happy to use their new toys.

We live in a world where an almost exclusively white police force is in charge of patrolling a predominately African American community. We live in a world where police murder unarmed teenagers and, for the most part, get away with it.

Mike Brown is still dead. Let’s not forget that. He was shot unarmed while trying to surrender to police. Let’s not forget that this is the normal that Ferguson and the rest of us are returning to.

When that changes, then there truly will be reason to celebrate.

* Images: The Daily Banter